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[Xmca-l] Re: Ventriloquation re-ducks



Mike,
Moving to the concrete, recently I have been tracing the shifting
relations of the contrasting genres of muthos [myth] and
logos [rationality] and the polyphonic ways these genres have played out as
particular understandings. However, what is fascinating is the way these
genres interweave throughout different epochs and either muthos or logos
can be in the ascending position.
To give one example, Hayden White explores the shifting understandings of
the relation of *the social* with *the cultural* as differing ways of
orienting to logos. Hayden wrote;

"In many respects both Marxist and Western academic social science regarded
a pre - or unscientific human consciousness as the principal cause of the
problems that a genuinely scientific study of society and its processes
would ultimately solve. Much like the Freud of *Civilization and its
Discontents*, Marxist and Western academic social science agreed that a
*civilization* undomesticated and undisciplined by scientific knowledge of
human nature, society, and culture was the cause of the peculiar
*discontents* of a specifically *modern* society. From this ASSUMPTION
arose the desire informing both of these social sciences to *reduce*
culture to the status of an epiphenomenon of processes - specifically
social processes - which because they were intrinsically grounded in
humanity's relations with the material world and inherently utilitarian or
aim-oriented in their motivation, could be construed AS RATIONAL.in their
articulation and therefore submissible to the ministrations of
scientifically DERIVED twchniques of manipulation, education, and
disciplination in a way that culture, conceived as *play*, *values*,
*superstition*, *art*, *religion* and the like, was not." [in "Beyond the
Cultural Turn", 1999,  where Hayden White wrote the afterword to this
edited text]

This is one fragment, and he goes on to also articulate the shift towards
the mythic voice in the ascendence. The multivoiced theme is left ambiguous
and there is always *excess* beyond either muthos or logos. It is the
*ambiguity* and *ambivalence* that seems central.

Mike, as I *read* Hayden above, I experience a type of ventriloquation of
the interweaving of muthos and logos though historical epochs.  In the
above quote, Hayden is expressing a genre which expresses logos in the
ascendence and muthos is in a supporting role.
However, logos does not have the last word and other voices enter and
exit center stage. As I *read* narratives which trace the emergence of
different *genres* [concepts] it seems that the concept of *venting* may be
appropriate as a way of expressing the interweaving voices across the ages
that we hear in our current reflections. The multivoiced expressions of our
internal and external *talk* seems to reverberate across multiple time
scales. However in each *turn* also is a *return* and this also can be
traced through human *development.

Larry


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 10:23 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Larry--  The etymological research was Eugene, not me. Sorry if my
> summarizing was inaccurate on who said what.
>
> I assume there are a great many varieties and modes of ventriloquation
> that can be characterized the various terms you propose. In every case
> under consideration its clearly important to identify the communication in
> such terms to be relevant...... gotta rise to the concrete, and in doing
> so, to fill out the concept in as much detail as the conclusions you want
> to reach seem to require.
> mike
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Mike.
>>
>> The exploration of voice *as* ventrilocation projected within
>> puppets circulating around persons and personas in character are using
>> metaphors of the stage and theater. [all life is a stage]
>>
>> I wonder more about the notion of  the types of genres AND tropes within
>> which the persona and masks are actually expressed.
>> I hear more the question of *voicedness* and *multivoicided* expressed
>> within multiple *traditions* [genres, tropes] and it is not merely our
>> personal voices being generated, but the actual *traditions* speaking
>> through us given voices which
>> , are *returning to the conversation. I wonder how often it is NOT the
>> puppets ventriloquating as it is our  anscestors speaking?
>> The question *who* is doing the speaking is a deeply complex question.
>> Yes our voices can speak as *intra* voices, they can speak as inner and
>> outer voices, they can speak as outer voices but returning to the
>> discussion of play and playworlds, our are voices also expressed within
>> *worlds* emerging in our conversations.
>>
>> I would like to introduce a notion of*generous* readers and *generous
>> listeners* who in their interactions with interlocutors are also
>> participating with ancestors [and traditions, genres, tropes]. Generous and
>> generativity as reading that OPENS ZONES OR CLEARINGS of *care*.
>>
>> I have been using the *concept* ventriloquation to express the truth that
>> we are all *crows* who steal each others egg words and fill them with our
>> own *meanings* and *sense*[David K's metaphor].
>> As Mike showed in the etymology of the word *ventriloquation* there are
>> many crows.  However these egg words when transformed [translated] are also
>> expressing particular *traditions* within which the newly filled egg word
>> makes sense.
>>
>> Ventriloquintation as an egg word is not making puppets or masks speak. I
>> wonder if it is more constitutive a process that develop how *I* speak.
>> This notion of 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person *voice* as
>> constituting new forms of *character formation [and new forms of
>> socioability.
>>
>> I'll pause
>> Larry
>>
>
>
Status: O